Research Progress of Autophagy and Pulmonary Diseases

Autophagy wildly exists in eucaryotic cells which is essential vital phenomena. Autophagy is an important mechanism that makes cells adapting the environment change, defensing invasion of pathogenic microorganism and maintaining homeostasis. The activity of autophagy fluctuates in many lung diseases, it closely related with the lung diseases' occurrences and developments. Autophagy has happened in pulmonary emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis and many other lung diseases, and plays an important role in these diseases. This review summarized it from the perspective of relationship of autophagy and lung diseases. It helps to understand the effect that autophagy produced in lung diseases and so as to further study the regulation of autophagy and to provide new ideas for the therapy of lung diseases.